Beautiful Lie
by melissaisdown
Summary: The first week they worked together. House/Cuddy Preseries.


Pairing: House/Cuddy, Rating: M  
Summary: The first week they worked together.  
Angsty, contemplative preseries [long] oneshot with direct reference to the "You gave me everything I wanted because one night I gave you..." quote from 'Top Secret.' Notes: Written for **ss_huddy**. Lifted lines from the show and song lyrics scattered throughout. 7,500 words. Please comment.

-** Beautiful Lie **-

It's **Monday** when he walks through these doors for the first time––– on the payroll and with a cane, since Stacy left. House has already taken too much today but as he peers into the crowded clinic, his instinct is to swallow a few more vicodin. So he does.

It's not that he's nervous. He's a cripple, he's in pain and this is his first attempt to function in his profession under such conditions, so his self confidence is skewed, his insecurity is escalating but he's not nervous. This is his job now, and he goes through another set of doors with dissatisfaction tainting the disillusion of a new day.

What a beautiful lie, to think everything will always stay the same.

The last pill went down rough, horizontal and creeping almost stagnant along his esophagus. He swallows a few times to encourage gravity and lubricate its passage into his bloodstream. But it still feels stuck and will slowly be dissolving behind his adam's apple for at least an hour.

When his mouth is wet again, he tilts his head and stares into Cuddy's office. Or, looking at her makes him salivate. It's too early for Pavlov, too early to distinguish cause and effect. 'Does she always dress like that? Or is it just positive reinforcement for my first day on the job?' He'll have to ask her later.

In plain clothes he limps past the sick people and sits in the clinic waiting room, hoping he'll pass for a patient. House pulls out a magazine and reads, sometimes turning it vertical to better appreciate the centerfold. After thirty minutes a disgruntled parent complains to Cuddy that a pervert is reading pornography in public.

"In my office, now."

House smiles when she turns away and, following slowly, appreciates her ass as much as any centerfold.

"What do you think you're doing?" She asks, tearing the cover of the magazine as she rips it from his hand as she struts into her office.

"Research. Female anatomy is fascinating."

Her brow's furrowed and her lips are pursed. She wants to strangle him.

"I like to learn new things," he says snickering.

"Why aren't you working?

"I didn't know what exactly you wanted me to do."

"It's a clinic. You come in, you pick up a chart, you treat sick people."

House squints, incredulously.

"Where are these _charts _you speak of?" He asks sarcastically.

"What if I can't find a pen?"

"If you don't know want to do this, then–––" She starts, a tentative threat.

The prospect of unemployment comes quicker than expected, so House rebuffs:

"Fine. But this job better have benefits beyond the expression on a patient's face when they're prescribed antibiotics. Benefits that include those funbags inside your bra. Is it cold in here? Maybe you should turn the air down, I mean unless you're planning on scolding anybody besides me before lunch."

Cuddy ignores him and sits, crossing her legs contemptuously, as if she's neither offended nor flattered, but already getting used to him and his big mouth. Sighing, House walks back out and knows now that he'll need a new strategy if he's ever going to get what he wants.

There are a few moronic patients. A sprained ankle, a couple of colds and some chlamydia, nothing that couldn't be treated by a monkey with a bottle of motrin. He feigns a page and leaves. This is only part of his new job. He's also supposed to assist then, maybe, partner with Douglas in Nephrology. Cuddy's trying to find a place for him but he feels like the last clown trying to fit into a Volkswagen and his shoes are too big. Truly, he's splitting the workload and starting at a fraction of Douglas' salary. He's supposed to be grateful but there's certain contempt, knowing his own diagnostic greatness. She's only adding insult to injury, literally.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, cysts, cancer, dialysis; there's no mystery in the symptoms or diagnosis, no cures either, just treatment and transplants and the end of his first day.

-

**Tuesday**'s sun is burning the back of his neck. He has to walk slower now and always away from the light.

It's already noon, he's only three hours late today. The clinic has people crammed shoulder to shoulder like sardines, and with a similar stench as well. When he abandons the crying babies and viagra seeking senior Lotharios, he slants, standing in front of her office for a long beat.

Cuddy's changed, maybe as much him. An administrator, she's traded one sort of godlike glory for absolute control, a spot at the top of the hierarchy–––forfeiting the power or medicine for the authority of paperwork. Her hair is different and she's wearing too much make up. Age is advancing and he can see it in her eyes, the fear. The moment she became the youngest dean of medicine, the moment she became the first female and the lost time that is her future, the tick of her biological clock, he can see, hear, feel it all thinly veiled in pencil skirts and pearls, eye shadow and behind a desk. She's miserable.

She's married.

They're newlyweds in a way. They've said their vows, signed the papers, agreeing not to have and to hold but to butt heads and banter and bite, when necessary. It's like they eloped out of her guilt, ignorant to the consequences of an impulsive commitment and he's refusing to end the honeymoon, to admit that they're just an ordinary pair now, employer and employee.

For a while he was sure her labcoat would be the closest thing to a wedding gown she'd ever wear. White, tailored pride. But now she doesn't even have that, just a big office and a name plate, her signature of people's paychecks. The job is everything to her, it's what she's always wanted but he can see she's still not happy. There's the stress, yes, but there's an emptiness beneath the responsibility. The job's justification for being alone, but her ambition was about more than being the boss.

House steps closer, his hand on the door as he continues his voyeuristic examination. Her skirt's shorter than when she was his attending. Tighter too. He's forgotten what great legs she has and experiences a rare levity when he remembers the tennis shorts and the tank tops, the rackets and sweat of Ann Arbor.

"You're late. Again," Cuddy says coming out of her office before he can go in.

"But _mom_, my alarm didn't go off. Okay, it did.

But I needed an extra long shower today because of what you were wearing yesterday."

"Three hours?" She asks, her voice warm from the coffee, wary with disbelief, but she brushes her hair out of her face in response to the lewd compliment.

Then she holds up a file.

"Inexplicable stomach pain, polyneuritis, muscle weakness progressing into complete paralysis..."

House tears the file from her hand.

"Patient into the ER four days ago, treated by three doctors and he's still deteriorating."

"You had me at polyneuritis," he says, scanning the page in front of him. Cuddy walks away confident about his competence.

House spends the next six hours diagnosing, treating and curing a case with Guillain-Barre. When he's done, he rewards himself with a handful of vicodin. Then he broods triumphant in the cafeteria, radiating the thrill and gratification of solving a medical mystery.

It's a game to him, Cuddy knows. It's a shame that it's not something more than a puzzle, that instead of a Messiah complex he's developed a Rubik's complex with no bedside manner, no motivation other than finding clues and seeing how they all connect.

She has no idea what she's going to do with him, no idea yet what she _can_ do.

-

Hump day is a cruel, misleading misnomer. The truth is that he's thinking about her. The tension in her shoulders, the flush across her chest, high, and when he sees it, he remembers that color from years gone by. Most days he'll test her limits, **Wednesday** he's pushing her just to see that shade.

The clinic is congested but he squeezes through it, picking up the last lollipop on his way, an inferior flavor. As he approaches Cuddy's office, preparing to demand another unsolvable case, House has an idea. A short series of lascivious scenarios flash through his brilliant and dirty mind. She needs to relieve the tension, he could do that for her.

But he blinks and crosses the threshold, a caustic cripple forced to hold a phallic prop at arms length and at all times.

Cuddy doesn't see him come in, she hears him but pretends she doesn't, hoping he will go away if she ignores him. There are times when it's just too much to be near him. To look him in the eyes, to watch his lips move or feel his presence, the draft as his body brushes close to hers, the sight of him limping or the cane or the prescription bottle–––

It was hard during the infarction but it's been so long, three days and it's all coming back, his pain and hers, his pain _is_ hers.

A beat. House looms, scrutinizing her as she works. Cuddy's lips are pink and match her blouse, her gaping amaranth mouth yawning insatiably steals his attention. Is she bored with her new job already? Or is she tired from another sleepless night with the burden of the hospital beside her in bed?

Both questions pass quickly because all he can imagine is his own mouth on those lips. The paint on them would leave a beautiful but indelible stain, if it means something, though. And with her it would mean something so, he suppresses the scenes playing loud and bright in his mind's eye.

"Clinic," She says without looking at him.

"Not until you give me back my porn."

"No."

"I'm single now, all I have are the girls in print and my hand, " he says, waving a few phalanges.

"I know, that's why I threw it in with biohazard waste. Go to the clinic, do your job."

"How do expect me to function with all this pent up sexual energy?"

"Direct it toward something productive, like your job."

"But ejaculation is much more effective."

"You have to do your clinic hours, House. Jerk off when you're not on the clock. It's hard enough finding anyone willing or with the time to staff it."

"But I'm _not_ willing."

"You have no choice. Do your job––– Douglas and the clinic –––and, when another difficult case comes along, it's yours. And if that's not good enough, leave and don't get paid."

House wants to argue, fight, duel. Fuck. He wants to say 'You're not the boss of me' or 'I shouldn't have to negotiate,' but none of it's true. He's hers now: her employee, her subordinate so he nods to the compromise. The lime lollipop has made his tongue green and he sticks it out at her child in a juvenile display of defeated resistance.

An involuntary flutter in her chest startles Cuddy. House's tongue turns her on. It's been too long since she's had a man in her bed. Even longer since she's had someone else's tongue in her mouth, gliding or lapping across other parts of her body. She's set adrift on the thought of how talented his mouth would be if it weren't all innuendo and insult, snide and snark and sarcasm coming out of it. There's something sexy about the way he licks and his obsession with the fleeting taste of sweetness.

Long nights alone and days spent here and now she's attracted to House. The rude abrasive bastard, irresistible and impossible. She sighs with that realization and he turns and stammers out before her weakness for him rises to the surface.

She can't be falling for House, not again, not already.

-

**Thursday** is the beginning of the end. Douglas and the clinic are intolerable and House isn't sure if he'll ever get what he wants or anything he really deserves.

The candy on the clinic counter is restocked and a red lollipop is on top. He takes it and heads into an exam room having finally found his favorite. Miserable regardless, with a chart but no patient he decides to take a nap.

An hour later Cuddy finds him, livid and shrieking, the rise of her blood pressure reddening her cheeks. She's screaming at him and she's sexy somehow in all her exasperation. He tunes her out, with the stick of the lollipop protruding between his lips as he lays on the exam table, arms bent behind his head.

Melting in his mouth, the cherry is artificial and delicious and sends his imagination into the realm of sex. And, Lisa Cuddy. Her chest is heaving and her breasts have a bit of bounce, and if he weren't determined to be rebellious, destined to resist, he'd sit up and kiss those lips, just to shut her up, just to taste her.

His curiosity continues, inhaling deep he can smell her, something floral, a hint of fruit. He closes his eyes and pictures her on top of him, or bent over the mahogany desk in her office, or this exam table, it doesn't matter. Hard and deep or long and sweet, he wants to know what flavor Lisa Cuddy is.

When she stops yelling and realizes the futility of all of her words and warnings, House reaches into his pocket and grabs a few vicodin. The acerbic bitterness of the pills and saccharine syrup of the candy blend and blur into his tastebuds and consciousness. How sweet it is, he thinks, he's getting _paid_ for this.

Cuddy leaves, biting her bottom lip and wringing her hands, her heels echo on her exit. House attempts to finish the day in Nephrology but after a few choice words about Douglas' hair, his ability as a doctor and his wife, House is back in her office. Or his head is anyway.

"What now?" She asks in a low disappointed tone. No more Nephrology, he thinks but can't say it.

"Need a consult," he says quickly and pulls his head out, pacing for the clinic.

-

"Are you even still a doctor?" House asks when she enters the exam room.

"Did you bring me in here just to insult me?"

"No. How about a quickie?"

"If it'll get you to do your job..." she says out of frustration and immediately regrets it.

House is silent for a moment, grinning and trying to gauge her bluff. Dilated pupils, flared nostrils, nipples hard, visible, close. He starts to unbuckle his belt.

"House!"

"What? You hold up your end of the bargain and I'll..."

A nurse opens the door, but wide eyed and dropped jawed, closes it quickly.

"Are you _trying_ to make me look bad? Because I hate to break it to you, but if I don't have a job, neither do you."

"No, I'm trying to make it look like we're having sex, because I hate to break it to _you_ but, I want to have sex. I don't care if you don't fit in the party pants anymore, you're still a respectable administrative woman, now strip."

"I want you to do your job."

"I want my porn back. But sex with you would be slightly more convenient, we're in a room with a bed...the door has a lock. I don't even have to buy you dinner first. You have a meeting in fifteen minutes so we could skip the foreplay..."

House wants to elaborate, he wants to be more explicit, tell her that he's not a cripple if he's laying down, tell her that he gets hard when she shouts his name, that she needs to come, that he knows how badly she wants him, that he can give her everything she wants if–––

Cuddy stares at him, his belt's still unbuckled, his pants unzipped. This would be easier if he weren't so impossible, if he just admitted the attraction instead of dwelling on her boobs and ass and imperfections, if it were anyone but House.

She could just give in, if––––

Instead she walks out, with a fierce stride, the pace slowing as she remembers.

- - - - - - - -

The day after the surgery, after he was saved and maimed, when Cuddy still thought he was unconscious from the chemically induced coma, she went into House's hospital room. Stacy had gone, to get coffee or to sleep in her own bed for the first time in five days, she'd be back, if only for a few short months.

Cuddy wasn't being emotional. She didn't raise the sheet, look at his leg and weep. It was her suggestion but not her decision, and she'd struggle with semantics and guilt always, but not today. It was clinical, she changed the dressing and the catheter bag. She opened his hospital gown to see the burns from the defibrillator paddles. But no tears welled with the memory of resuscitating him as she applied the burn cream to his chest. That morning she regretted nothing, he was alive and she was alone and grateful, by his side.

She knew she could never have House, no more than this, with her hand over a life- saving brand, indescribably happy that his heart was still beating.

Cuddy thought House was asleep, she thought the despair, the agony, the sadness across his face was temporary; that he'd wake and one day, maybe, thank her. But he wasn't asleep, he was more cognizant than ever.

He felt the tips of her fingers as they traced scars across his chest, he felt a cold wet washcloth wipe sweat from his forehead and Cuddy's hand take his when she was done, when she knew she had to leave but didn't know if they'd ever be alone together like this again.

House felt pain, he felt anger and he felt her lips against his, a hint of mint and coffee when she kissed him, her mouth was open, like a word, like everything they'd never say, as her thumb brushed across his closed eyes.

It was love, he knew, a sort of sincere affection he could never return (and proof he could never admit).

- - - - - - -

**Friday** never forgets and four days ago the end of the week seemed as impossible as forgiveness.

The leg is different everyday. Ache, twinge, prick, some days the misery is dull and deep and other it's sharp and shallow. The scar changes everyday too. It grows, he thinks. The muscle's gone but the pain remains, a sort of phantom throe and throb. The whole leg's a scar, soon it will be his whole body. The premonition of pain is worse than the thought of lapsing into addiction. House swallows his pills and gets out of bed, his hand over the hollow indent of his thigh. Today he will work. Today he will try and forget. Today, he will get what he wants.

The morning is spent obediently in the clinic, he sees patients ––– mostly sunburnt or dehydrated–––and wonders if his strategy will work. He wants to know if Cuddy is kinky and how she relieves the tension that turns him on.

"Vibrators," House mumbles to Wilson during a comfortable silence at lunch.

Handcuffs and tongue depressors, leather and latex, the perfect balance of sex and science. And sex.  
It's more than fantasy or fascination, she's an anomaly. Cuddy is a question. She's a perplexing and impenetrable puzzle unto herself. She's more interesting than most women, sexier and way more accomplished. He knows how much she's sacrificed for it all and there may not be envy or admiration, but there's always been respect.

Lacking his objectivity, she sees things as they are and as they could be but doesn't see the chasm in between. Today he will take advantage of her hopeful blindness.

-

"You love me," he wants to say now. It's not a question it's fact, it's truth, it's the last shred of honesty in his anarchic new start.

But he can't say it, not without his voice cracking with the real crux, a clue: his love for her. He tells a beautiful lie every time that he settles for silence.

"I thought you hired me out of guilt, but the truth is that you have the hots for me. You don't just want me under you, you want me _naked_ and under you, grunting in agreement with–––"

They're walking through the corridors of the clinic and Cuddy's concealing her embarrassed blush, she's still the boss, he can't humiliate her like this. She reaches her office, tries to end the argument.

"I hired you because you're a good doctor. And because nobody else wanted you, so I got you cheap."

She steps in. He follows.

"I can save lives," as if that's enough.

"Not without this hospital, not without the equipment and the technology this place provides."

'Not without me', she thinks.

"I'm the best doctor here and you're wasting me on runny noses and crotch rot."

"I don't want to fire you House. You've only been here four days.

But you haven't worked for almost a year and I don't–––"

'She knows I'm the best and she just doesn't trust me?' House asks himself, he wants to ask her but the anger's crested.

"I know! I also had half my thigh removed because _you're_ doctors couldn't diagnose an infarction in less than three days."

Muscle death and amputation, still and always stalking close behind them both.

"You need a diagnostic department," he says, regaining composure, trying to gain her trust.

"What this hospital needs is–––––"

"What do I have to do to get what I want from you?" He cuts her off, concise sharp syllables, no inflection, no deflection.

"What do you want?"

Suddenly their voices sound soft in an almost silent beat. They're close and alone and the summer sun is setting, like a sign. It's a simple transition, the way their rage can so easily transmute into passion, physical and inevitable. All of the pain, regret, guilt and love stands between them, it is the stillness in the air they breathe, it's what they see every time they close their eyes.

House has forgotten the question, but he knows the answer, the truth is in front of him.

"Cuddy," he says, his hand rising to her cheek.

"Lisa," he tries but it sounds like an accident, unfamiliar on his lips.

"Why don't you trust me?"

"I do trust you," she says and tears are forming, the thought's incomplete, she closes her eyes.

With daring determination, wanting something more, he forces himself a step forward. House bows his head, letting his lips linger close to hers. Staring at those lips he can almost taste the peppermint and caffeine of months before. It feels like yesterday, it feels like forever.

But he doesn't kiss her. He lets her lips part in expectation, words forming in retaliation but all he can hear is her breathing; watching the slow rise and fall of her chest. He has her exactly where he wants her, with a clear vision of what he could be and staring at what he is, what she's made him.

His eyes are etched with a trace of green, gentle intent behind piercing brilliance. The long pale line of her neck is exposed to him and when Cuddy tries to speak his lips land on her jaw, he's kissing her cheekbone, her chin. He whispers in her ear, recognition more than talk and she remembers, everything.

Then their mouths meet, when she's still lost in the memory, when it feels like the future and not a caprice, a deviation. It feels like a commitment, but more. More than a kiss, it's a choice. House or the hospital, love and lust or power and purpose. It's not easy but it is simple.

"Stop," she says but it's weak and his arms feel like home.

House kisses her harder, deeper, stoking the flame of her fury as if it's all just another act of juvenile disobedience. But her mouth closes and she pulls away, or pushes, and he's suddenly aware that he was leaning on her to stand. He stumbles, stunned his plan has failed.

"I can't," she says still breathless and tinged with regret.

"We can't."

Cuddy's behind her desk again, identity redefined in an instant. He acknowledges, understands, even respects her decision. He knows he can't always get what he wants, that there's no goading or seducing or arguing her into giving him the job of his dreams. But as he walks away, he exaggerates the limp, wanting her guilt to balance his dejection. Then suddenly it hits him, hard and heavy: he doesn't just want reign and riddles, he wants her.

But it's over now, his last first chance ruined by his obsession, covered by a callous, like the plaster cast over his broken heart. He may never love again. But he doesn't want to love her, he just wants her.

-

Cuddy works late tonight. The office is part protection and part prison. The paperwork is endless, the meetings mind numbing but through it all she's thinking of him. House kissed her for a reason, he believes in reason more than anything, more than religion or relationships or her. He has to know that she loves him, it's not new nor is it a difficult to deduce. She sighs staring through two sets of glass doors, she's alone now but he was here and no matter his motivation, she knows now that she should have given him what he wanted, she should have let him give her what she wanted.

- - -

It starts sometime after midnight.

House is standing under the bar lights when he pours a few pain pills into his hand and chases them with bourbon. The jukebox is playing some Stones song and when Jagger says, '..._my favorite flavor, cherry red_,' House mouthes the words, sober or not he's still curious if Cuddy tastes like cherries.

He comes here more now. He's been fired four times, lost the last woman he'd let himself love and three quarters of his thigh. Alcohol's a slow suicide, cheaper than a revolver. Here he's numb, he's nobody. He sees other men leave with hookers and sometimes considers it, but he's broke and he's broken and he hasn't, _yet_.

There's a woman at the other end of the bar, laughing and turning, holding her tonic like it's time, passing then lost, a myth, a weight, forcing him to fall back into the moment. The room's suddenly spinning, her hair's dark and her face is young and her lips, he knows that shade of pink. But when she looks at him, House see she's just a girl really, a hint of what he could have had in Michigan, what he still could have tonight.

The blood in his veins is boiling, his stomach's a knot, empty except for booze and sugar and opiates. When offered a refill, House looks pale and sick, like he's made a mistake, like he's just seen a ghost.

The familiar stranger leaves with someone else, he can smell her perfume when she passes him, and it hurts, being here. Memories come rushing like feral waves to his mind, he's hopeless and lonely and knows there's only one way to end the night.

Soon he's walking through warm air and under flickering streetlights, too drunk to notice that everyone's staring at him. House doesn't care what he looks like, the sky is falling and there's no tomorrow if––––

He just has to see her.

He knows that she'll break him in two.

-

The door is dim, eggshell and his shadow, waiting. It's a long minute, with the beat of his heart synchronizing  
to the tick of his watch. He hears her unlock the door as she turns the light on. He's facing the light, he's in the light, a humid August night with her, at last.

They're kissing before she can say anything, before she can see him but she knows the bristle of the beard, the hands holding her –––one pushing the wooden handle of a cane into her side, she knows the spit and spite and breath in her mouth.

"You need this," he says but the words are lost because she's holding his face to hers, needy almost, the furious press of their four lips together. House pulls back, fixes his eyes to hers in a sort of impatient paralysis.

"You want this."

His voice doesn't falter and his stance is strong as they blindly stumble backwards. Cuddy's kissing him without protest, she knows she wants this and there's no use trying to stop it now. House telling he what she wants, what she needs, it's nice to relinquish control, if only for a kiss, a few twilighted moments that feel like fiction, even as they unfold. And besides, House is right.

They don't break away, they breathe for each other and find the bedroom as if the dance there has been choreographed a week in advance. Really it's been years, a decade of fantasies about their unfettered youth, of the days they watched go by never knowing if tomorrow would reunite them but wondering and hoping and planning the beauty of such an unbelievable night, despite all the doubt.

The queen size bed is plain, cotton and down, it's color muted by the shade of midnight. House is a specter, looming and brooding even as he kisses her but it's not the same kiss as before. The ardor of their tongues is urgency, they're physically, mutually letting each other know that they're going to make love, here and now, fully and wildly and without losing a moment. There's no more waiting, no more wanting, it's over, the week is over.

She's pulling on his tshirt, even as she finds the zipper of his jeans and palms the bulge beneath the denim, but he stops her, he stares. Cuddy's wearing nothing but a silk robe and House wonders if she always showers at 1:00am or if she was expecting him. He pushes her to the bed, but it's more inertia than assault. She's sprawled and pale and naked beneath a thin piece of silk and he smiles at the sight, still standing.

It's getting easier to balance on one leg, but it requires concentration and he can't focus on anything right now except the flush rising and spreading across her exposed chest and the legs, impossibly long, strong, whole. She's perfection like this, with every flaw diffused by the soft moonlight, or erased by the want for her that's coursing through his body, more powerful than any drug. House unties the knot of silk keeping her robe closed, her body hidden, he's looking at her as if it's a feint, but he's not one for pretense and soon a sardonic smirk curls across his face. He opens it with his index finger, exposing her slowly and holding his breath, waiting for her to push him away, again.

The air conditioning has goosebumps prickling over her skin and under his touch. Cuddy's sweating and shivering when his mouth finds her breasts. His lips burn but he's being gentle, his hands are warm and his tongue is slick and now he's sucking hard, circling a nipple. "Greg," she begs into his hair where it's thin at the crown of his head. She's begging now, because she wants more than his mouth, more than this deliberate, exquisite torture, more than tonight.

House can't hear his name fall from her lips, he hears nothing except gasps and groans, a giggle when he tickles her, a curse when he pulls away. It's an agonizing descent as he moves down her body. Her stomach tightens as his nose nudges her legs apart, thumbs spiraling over her bent knees. House can smell her and see her, lush plump crimson rose lips. He kisses down one leg and up the other; she's wet, breaking with disbelief, her labia glisten darkly and they both realize that they somehow made this dream a reality. He can feel the tension in her thighs on either side of his head when touches her with his tongue finally, tasting cherries.

It's almost a flinch as she rises quickly, knocking the headboard against the wall. She's fisting the sheets, but it's not enough and she needs to touch him. Her hands are behind his head and she's pulling his hair, trying to keep him there, trying to push him deeper. She's soft and swollen against his mouth, and he tongues her lightly, just the subtle heat of contact. House swallows, relishing in the tart and tang of cherry juice, licking his way deeper, one long wet flick to sensitized skin. The moist heat of his breath radiates and Cuddy feels the ache spreading between her hips, a longing building fast and hard. She's rocking against his face and they both feel it, how perfect she fits there, how they just belong like this.

A hand glides from her belly button to his mouth. Fingers play across her until he presses one inside, smooth and sleek. Cuddy relaxes, breathing a faint profanity and House reaches as far as he can, then pushes in a second finger and strokes forward. She's slick and tight around him and starting to thrust against his hand, against the perfect pressure of his mouth.

House swirls his tongue and keeps rubbing rhythmically with his fingers. He can't breathe but it doesn't matter, he'd be proud to die in Cuddy's bed with the ripe warm flavor of her on his lips.

Cuddy's quivering, starting to spasm around his fingers, she's close. He's drinking her, eating her, enjoying and devouring and he doesn't stop, he can't stop but wishes he could see her face and kiss her through her climax.

He _makes_ her come, as much as he feels it, the shuddering sigh and clench of muscles, the sweetness of her surrender when she finally lets go. Her hips rise off the bed, afraid of his mouth parting from her lips, but he still doesn't stop, he stays connected and close, kissing and humming through the tremors of her orgasm until the trembling subsides and she's limp and soaking into the sheets.

He kisses her thigh, the point of a hip, trailing up her abdomen until his nose and mouth are between her breasts, then he smiles at her, his lips glossed with her bliss and kisses her softly on the mouth, just once, before he collapses at her side.

The tshirt he's wearing is stained with sweat across his chest, he's cold for a minute, but shining with effort. The passion's not gone, it's still newlywed and the heat of the night is doing more than making them stick to the bed.

After she catches her breath Cuddy turns to him, amazed, grateful, wiping beads of condensation from his forehead. The hunger's still there and the itch is so bad, she's kissing his neck and leaving her mark as her hands run under the shirt, moving up his slippery torso until it's bare. She wants him more now, all night and everyday.

Unbuckling his belt, House looks so thin, his cheeks are gaunt and his waist is narrowing, the jeans seem two sizes too big, but his arms are still strong and the muscle beneath his briefs is stunningly stiff when she reveals it, a little surprised his arousal hasn't been dulled by the narcotics. It's a proud shade of purple as she takes the seeping head of his shaft into her mouth, sucking once, to hear him hiss and then letting it drop out.

Cuddy kisses around his erection, pulling his pants lower and then off. She kisses his knees and stares at his thigh. The hair is growing back along the outskirts of the scar, he's healing. The guilt falls on her for a moment until finally she's kissing the line where she sutured and saved him and he closes his eyes, because he knew she would but he can't stand to see her like that, and hates that he can't say it.

Her mouth moves in again and her tongue laps along the length of him, licking the tip as it oozes in expectation. The phone rings.

"Don't," House says, not caring about any middle of the night emergency, wanting, pleading, begging for her to choose him, this, over her job.

"Don't answer the phone."

Cuddy doesn't even consider how this will end, except that it isn't ending yet. Maybe she'll wake up alone but still, she's not now, or for a few more hours.

House waits, so close already, knowing it's not a difficult decision for her, thinking he doesn't matter at all. But for once he's wrong.

Lips brush across his stomach and he growls until she's straddling him, coming up to kiss his chin. Sweat is streaming down his face like all of the tears he could never shed for himself and he wants to say 'Thank you,' or 'I love you,' or at least 'Lisa,' but he can't. He'll die if he says it, her body his coffin, his soul sold to the only woman who believes it exists.

Incessant and demanding, he throbs between their bodies, Cuddy rises and he penetrates her, sinking so, so slowly. With unexpected force and insane concentration they're making love, or admitting it–––continuing the imaginary emotion that's been unrequited and building for so long.

His hands are all over her: breasts, back, ass, pushing down, impaling harder. It hurts, the pain of someone so deeply, so finally, so irreversibly becoming a part of her. Then he's rubbing slow circles, where she needs it and it's too much, his hand across her collarbone, rising, bringing her mouth to his, the flat of his nail and rough skin of his bent knuckle nudging into her ribs. But he's pulling too hard on her nipple and her palms stroke the tautened skin of his forearms, up to his wrists until she has his hands pinned above his head, letting him writhe and thrust and improvise with his mouth.

He's breathing into her ear, then biting it, planting sloppy kisses across her face until he grunts an incoherent syllable that sounds like 'Lise,' and she lets go. House is touching her again, sometimes it's easier to give him what he wants. Sometimes, they want the same thing. Her chest is pressed to his and their legs are aligned in a sort of sexual symmetry on the mattress. He's shifting and trying and she's rocking and riding, kissing his temple and jaw.

Cuddy has almost forgotten what this is like, the tacit blind intimacy of giving in to temptation. She can still taste herself on his lips, dripping into the salt of his sweat and she's breathless, gasping into oblivion, 'There, harder, God, Greg.' And his eyes are the color of the sky outside her window, they're a promise, staring at her and waiting, holding back. She's kissing him and it's rough now, jerking and jutting urgency with her fingers combing through his hair, pulling, and her teeth biting his bottom lip until she can taste blood and bourbon and he's scratching her, eight fingers down her spine, bringing her closer, holding her still.

It's intensity and insanity the way pain and pleasure are blurring together until it's just pulsing light in the darkness, vast and inescapable, searing through them. Her hips quicken and her hands frame his face and it's weightless unstoppable motion as she clutches and comes, kissing him. House thrusts and arches into her, extending the ecstasy. She buries her face in his shoulder and then pulls back and he loves her in that moment, when her eyelids flutter and her lips part. He wants to say it, the three words are in his throat, his mouth is moving, but all he can do is come, with her, for her, in her–––––hard, deep and for what feels like forever.

Relief. She's panting and purring, boneless on top of him. Heavy and pinning him there, he doesn't mind but he doesn't know what to do either. A thumb strokes down her back and his other hand is lifting the sheet to cover them. Cuddy's head is resting high on his heart; she can hear the air rushing into his lungs as his chest heaves and she blinks away a tear that was brimming the entire time. She wants to kiss him, hold him, make love again and he wants that and more but they don't even look at each other. His chin rests against the top of her head and he kisses the air above her hair, closing his eyes.

When she shifts, he slips out of her and feeling the hot slow trickle down her thigh, she realizes that they forgot a condom. Then she curls up beside him, close and comfortable and knowing it doesn't matter.

-

They have no idea of the pain that the future holds. There will be a baby and another, but not before IVF and ketamine, perjury and paternity tests. Stacy will return only to leave again, House will be cured only to be crippled again, but they'll be together past pregnancy and through adoption, before and after all of the loss and lies.

The struggle has just begun.

From this day forward, he'll be her maverick diagnostician who ignores every rule and she'll be his boss, denying that he's more to her than just another doctor, denying that tonight meant something, everything, that tonight ever happened. She'll draw lines, give orders and negotiate, he'll piss her off by breaking laws and taking chances. But she will fight for him as much as with him. This will be the sum of their love affair, but not the end.

-

The blue moon and silver highlights are fading, melting into morning's harbinger. Now it's a memory and almost romantic, him on her doorstep in the middle of the night, the unexpected embrace, spontaneity and a promise unspoken. This could be something, if they let it. But Cuddy knows he'll never change, he'll never love her the way she loves him. He'll probably make her worse for standing by him, for defending and protecting and wanting him. Here. He probably won't even stay. But he's brilliant, he deserves a job, more, someone who will stay, someone who won't unlove him when he pushes, when he shoves, when he runs away.

House knows he can't leave immediately but he has to leave eventually. He sighs, thinking in minutes and seconds, not hours. Then it happens: she falls asleep in his arms. She's tired and she trusts him, and that's all he really wanted, her trust.

Soon he's drifting into a dream with open eyes, watching the summer sun rise. Dawn's breaking, bathing them in the morning light together. It's the start of a new day and the beginning that they both need.

-

A few hours have passed by the time House opens his eyes again. Transient gold glitters through thick curtains, still round and rising in the pastel pink and baby blue sky. Cuddy's closer, her face a contented pout, hair mussed and tangled, fanned across a pillow and his shoulder. He's staring at her, trying to quantify how much he will hurt her by leaving, trying to rationalize staying.

Stretching, he makes himself wake. She has an arm draped over him possessively and he pries himself out of her hold, bringing her palm to his lips as he says goodbye. Standing is painful because of the leg and because she's still naked under the sheets, in arms reach and he doesn't want to leave. But it's a beautiful lie, to think that there will never be a next time.

The balls of his bare feet are cold against her floor, from the AC as much as reality and he reaches for his cane. He hopes she's still sleeping as he lifts the blanket to cover her more completely and shivers. She stirs and smiles and he smiles at her smiling, but something sensitive is something never to be seen.

When he's dressed and leaning against the door frame, reaching for his shoes, he looks at her one last time and reconsiders. Something is nudging at him to go back, but he can't. House still tastes cherries and knows he'll have an office Monday. He'll have a department, he'll have everything he wants, everything she could possibly give him. He'll have her again, one day. She'll have him every day before.

They both have last night.


End file.
